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U.S. Says Sanctions Hurt Iran Nuclear Program

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon has been delayed by sanctions, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said here on Monday, making the strongest and most public claim by the Obama administration that its pressure campaign was hampering Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Iran has had technological problems that have made it slow down its timetable,” Mrs. Clinton said in a televised town hall meeting at a university here. “The sanctions are working,” she added. “Their program, from our best estimate, has been slowed down.”

Her blunt statement, after similar comments by Israeli and European officials, is sure to color the debate in the Middle East. Iran’s neighbors have watched its drive for nuclear status with increasing alarm, with some pressing the United States to act against Tehran soon.

Mrs. Clinton did not detail the problems with Iran’s program, how long a delay they might cause, or the precise sources of her information. But she contended that the difference between a one-year development cycle and a three- or four-year cycle did not alter the strategic choices confronting Iran’s neighbors or the rest of the world.

Speaking to students on the first day of a four-day visit to the region, Mrs. Clinton urged Arab states not to waver in enforcing sanctions. Abu Dhabi and Dubai, to which she traveled later on Monday, have curtailed their banking relationships with Iran, under pressure from the United States.

There is evidence of computer sabotage from an unknown source that has disrupted the functioning of the centrifuges that Iran uses to enrich uranium. American officials have also said Iran is having trouble obtaining materials like carbon fiber to build the centrifuges.

The administration says the sanctions are squeezing Iran’s leaders in other ways, depriving them of access to financial markets and turning the Iranian state shipping line into a pariah in foreign ports.

In addition, two of the country’s nuclear experts were killed and a third was wounded last year in bomb attacks that Iran said were the fault of Israel and the United States. On Monday, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said it had broken up an international Israeli spy network linked to one of the attacks, state-owned news media said. After a broad investigation, Iran arrested “the main agents” behind a bombing in January 2010 that killed Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a nuclear theorist, it said.

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The ministry’s statement said its investigation had involved “months of complicated measures and access to sources of the Israeli regime,” and had inflicted “heavy damage on Israel’s information and security structures,” discovering “very important and sensitive” information about Mossad teams.

Israel does not routinely comment on such assertions, and there was no immediate response on Monday from the Israeli authorities.

Although Mrs. Clinton’s remarks on Monday were the most public statement of the effect of sanctions on Iran’s program, the under secretary of state for political affairs, William J. Burns, said in written testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in December, “Sanctions have hindered Iran’s development of a nuclear capability and the means to deliver them.”

Mrs. Clinton’s trip has other elements, including a stop on Monday at a solar-energy research facility, but her meetings have been dominated by what to do about Iran. Persian Gulf leaders’ fear of a nuclear Iran was palpable in the diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group.

The success of the sanctions may have bought the international community some more breathing room, Mrs. Clinton said. But she seemed determined to avoid complacency. “We have time, but not a lot of time,” she said to three women hosting a program called “Sweet Talk.” Aside from a question about how Mrs. Clinton met her husband at law school, there was little sweet talk on the program, much of which focused on the threat from Iran and the administration’s fruitless efforts to broker a Middle East peace accord.

Mrs. Clinton continually linked the two issues, accusing Iran of stoking the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as a way of deflecting attention from its nuclear activities. “We cannot let that attention get diverted,” she said.

Despite the recent setbacks, she said the United States remained committed to a two-state solution. Direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians fell apart last year because of a deadlock over the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

On Sunday, tensions were further inflamed when Israel began bulldozing part of the Shepherd Hotel, a decaying but symbolic building in East Jerusalem that Palestinians once owned, to make way for Jewish apartments. Mrs. Clinton said in a statement that the demolition “contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem.”

Speaking here, she said: “It is hard for both the Palestinians and the Israelis to have enough trust and confidence in the other to take the risks for peace. Part of what I am trying to do is to build up outside support for these tough decisions.”

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.

A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2011, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Clinton Says Sanctions Have Stalled Iran’s Effort to Make Nuclear Weapons. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe